Justice Kennedy officially announces his retirement effective July 31st. Trump apparently plans to submit a nominee by then. Given it's an election year, I think he should have to wait til after the election for the nominee to even be considered. /snark "This is the most important Supreme Cour...

Digital License Plates Roll Out In California California is testing new digital license plates on vehicles — opening up new possibilities and raising new privacy concerns. The digital plates use the same technology behind Amazon's Kindle e-book reader to display large letters and numbers, as any ot...

(Though I could see making an argument about diplomats — who aren’t fully subject to US jurisdiction). It's always been my understanding that this, specifically, is what the exception was meant to cover. Of course, intention doesn't always mean much in the face of attempts to fit the wording the do...

...freedom of speech will be magically preserved in this hypothetical prison (even when it clearly isn't that protected in any real-world prison)? Cutting of all communication with the outside world is a form of psychological torture. Prisons also have the right to talk to a lawyer. So are you goin...

I got "Sir"ed today in the drive through (the ordering intercom part). Then when I pulled up and the window opened, I was told that the pickup that had been in front of me had paid for my bagel. Went from pretty deflated to feeling fuzzy inside. It almost immediately occurred to me, though...

I have an unfortunate feeling that it isn't going to be as lucrative even as your current gig, and will come with its own set of challenges and frustrations. Former Landlady/Housemate is a middle school science teacher in Our Town, and she puts in a lot of time and emotional labor for her kids. I've...

(What's the word for people who live in Maine?) Mainers, although I don't think there's technically an official demonym. I know a few who like to call themselves Mainiacs. And then there's the ultra-special breed, the Maineiacs, who you'll find screaming abuse at opposing goaltenders from the stude...

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_history_of_unicode.png Title text: 2048: "Great news for Maine—we're once again an independent state!!! Thanks, @unicode, for ruling in our favor and sending troops to end New Hampshire's annexation." ^ the forum won't allow the three emojis at the end of ...

Sarah women and girls have a sixty percent rate of chicken pox. One of my favorite names too? Oh, the terrible fates of being a Sarah lady with chicken pox in our cruel, mess up world.... </3 :( To be clear, it's not like Sarahs are getting chickenpox at a 60% rate *now*. The vaccine's effectivenes...

The arrow definitely doesn't point to '95, but I think the trend line does start to move at the right place, and the change in the late '80s or '90 is still explained by the 1995 introduction of the vaccine because the illness doesn't hit at birth, but at some later point in childhood. I'm 30 this y...

the second failures: Maths and sciences often use their own terminology, which can be varied and complicated, requiring a layperson to NEED A F BOMBING dictionary or sciences/maths books just to understand what the phrases used are saying? For better or worse, all the terminology exists because the...

Okay... I am fighting the tempting to quit my Own thread forever and ever... 'cause you MEN are not listening. I am SO happy you said this. I have held the opinion that sexism against men is a real problem. [...] At the very least, you've given me an example. Saying, "I've talked to a bigot ag...

I know I'm kinda late to the party, but to me the concept that a business - an economic entity that involves people but is not human - can have a religous belief (and be protected in that belief) is mind boggling, bordering on absurd. Along these lines, (even?) as someone who leans libertarian, I'v...

The store has these tiny, hard alcohol bottles, for a dollar, and I keep seeing them and thinking that seems like a responsible amount. but it's actually kind of difficult to estimate the amount of drunkenness of ... 100 ml (two, tiny, plastic bottels) In New England, we call those nips. A standard...

chridd's post above is probably a better way of doing it, in that the two main parties are visible without having to zoom in, but here's a shapes-based version. Clinton voters lean left, Trump lean right. Best viewed at close to full-size.

If that's still not working for some folks, I can try to put one together with shapes. Thank you, I do appreciate your effort :-) However, even though I don't consider myself to be "severely" colour-blind, it didn't actually help me. Shapes please :-) Okeydoke, I'll see what I can do tomo...

Hi all. After several years of not doing much coding, I'm trying to write a short program in Python where the first step is logging into this forum. I know my way around Python in general reasonably well, but have never tried writing code to post anything (such as login data) vs scraping info (gener...

Hugs gratefully accepted. I don't know if the teen years thing is common. She was a schoolteacher for a few years after college (and still sort of remembers that, when prompted), but then raised five children and didn't go back to outside employment, so being at work wasn't a big part of her life. S...

I'm kind of terrified of Alzheimer's. Both my grandmothers developed it. It took my dad's mom about 10 years after diagnosis earlier this decade, and now I'm experiencing it much more intimately with my mom's mom, who was diagnosed somewhere around the time my other grandmother passed and eventually...

I feel like worrying about the details of how to fund this hypothetical app is putting the cart way before the horse in a thought experiment about how to design something that will facilitate rational conversation with others of differing views. I like Pfhorrest's idea of rating [posts/comments/inte...

Is there actually a current person called Pocahontas, or is this some form of racial epithet? According to the independent it's a racist slur against Elizabeth Warren, who has (possibly rather distant) Native American heritage. Apparently calling her Pocohontas is a recurring thing for Trump. It's ...

The problem I see with allowing even a small majority to cause secession is that you can thus override legitimate protections the people who don't want to secede have. Using Texas again, its constitution actually forbids same sex marriage/unions. Its since been overruled at a federal level. But if ...

A point I never really understood about these separation movements, is what you do about things like Federal laws or a Constitution? Once you're your own country you presumably will need to create a bunch of laws that were prior handled by your former federal government. But I never see any indicat...

Not sure about the "champ" thing, in the US I heard a cis woman being called champ (for not complaining about an unavoidable unpleasant situation ... kind of fits with dentistry) Outside of the context of referring to someone who is actually the reigning champion of something significant*...

Specifically, as a member of the State University System of Florida, it is itself a state entity and as such is not allowed to discriminate against speech except in very limited circumstances (which is how they prevented Spencer from coming directly after Charlottesville).